Stylish and intriguing, `Unbreakable' ends with a bang
By BILL FUSZ
Scene Movie Critic
This is a movie you have to see.
Twice.
"Unbreakable," M. Night Shyamalan's follow-up to his blockbluster, Oscar-nominated thriller, "The Sixth Sense," is simply the best suspense movie you will see all year; and at least until "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," comes out, probably the single best film of the year. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
As the previews so aptly show, Bruce Willis plays David Dunn, a stadium security guard in Philadelphia who is in a train accident that kills everyone aboard except himself. Not only is he alive, but he is remarkably unscratched. Upon hearing of the accident, a mysterious stranger and comic book art dealer, Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson, "Shaft") contacts Dunn, seeking to understand how it is that this miracle of survival occurred. Price is especially interested since he is afflicted with a malady directly counter to the fortunes of Dunn: his bones have always broken especially easily.
The remainder of the movie focuses on their mutual search to understand what it is that made Dunn so fortunate. To give away more would betray the manner in which the trailer has concealed the prime thrust of the movie. What Shyamalan accomplishes in the next hour and a half becomes the most fascinating and riveting conception of realistic heroism presented on screen in a very long time.
In a subtle way, Shyamalan examines what it means to be a hero in the modern world, playing with the conventions of comic books and comic book movies along the way. "Superhero realism" may be the only way to describe it: the calculating look at what types of limitations a real superhero might have in the world today.
The direction and camera work, which help add such depth to the film, truly establish Shyamalan as a top-rank director. Using a style that can be described as "Hitchcock-esque," he pulls the audience into the movie and instills genuine suspense.
An early scene shows a married Dunn flirting guiltily with a fellow passenger on the doomed train. Shot from between two seats immediately in front of them, the scene implicates the viewer in Dunn's guilt, as one feels like they are eavesdropping on a conversation they are not meant to hear.
Another subsequent scene has a doctor telling a just revived Dunn of the fate of the train. In the foreground, the audience sees a pool of blood slowly spread across the gauze covering the last dying passenger.
In contrast with the dark, realistic tone of the camera-work is a score set in the melodramatic style of comic book action movies. With techno-beat pieces lifted from "The Matrix" and victorious John Williams-style movements borrowed from "Superman," the score challenges the audience to reconcile the music with the disturbing hyper-realism of the movie's crimes.
Villainy in this film has no grandeur; instead of a Lex Luthor trying to take over the world, we are shown frat boys committing date rape and throwing bottles at pedestrians' heads, all shot through what looks like an omnipresent, omniscient security camera. Jarring and slightly out of sync with the film's material, the score serves to create a lasting uneasiness in keeping with the tone of "Unbreakable."
As one might expect from veterans like Willis and Jackson, their performances are excellent. Willis especially impresses in showing once again that he can leave his smirking action heroes behind for the understated dramatic roles. Also excellent are Robin Wright-Penn ("Message in a Bottle") and Spencer Treat Clark ("Gladiator") as Dunn's wife and son. Both provide solid, emotionally complex roles that only deepen the film's impact.
But the film's ending is what has gotten the most attention. All one can say is that it inspires dread and horror in the viewer unlike any film in a long time. If that were all it did however, "Unbreakable" would simply be a good movie. What makes the film great is the way in which the ending rewrites the entire story for the audience. The focus and meaning of the film cannot help but be different when confronted with the ending, and the only true way to establish this is to see it again. Finding out just how much is different in the new light created by the finale is what makes "Unbreakable" a truly outstanding movie. The film is one of the few cinematic achievements in a relatively lackluster movie year.
--5 out of 5 shamrocks
All Scene Stories for Thursday, November 30, 2000
